Lib Dems hope to gain dozens of seats with anti-Brexit campaign

Party says it has been preparing for a snap election since before the EU referendum, with 400 candidates already in place

The Lib Dems hope to capture dozens of seats but Tim Farron’s personal polling is an issue, with more than one-third of Britons saying they do not know who he is.
Photograph: Tom Nicholson/Rex/Shutterstock

Liberal Democrat strategists hope to gain dozens of seats from Labour and the Tories in London and the south-west by making opposition to Brexit the key issue of the seven-week snap election campaign.

The party said it had gained 2,500 new members in the first hour since Theresa May announced the 8 June poll, and the Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, focused on Brexit in his first statement.

“This election is your chance to change the direction of our country,” Farron said. “If you want to avoid a disastrous hard Brexit, if you want to keep Britain in the single market, if you want a Britain that is open, tolerant and united, this is your chance. Only the Liberal Democrats can prevent a Conservative majority.”

The party suffered a disastrous result in 2015, retaining just eight of its 57 seats after the coalition era. But it has gained one seat since, winning Richmond Park in south London from the Tories with an anti-Brexit campaign.

The former leader Nick Clegg has been selected to stand again in Sheffield Hallam, although he has yet to confirm his intentions in person. Vince Cable and the former environment secretary Ed Davey, who both lost their south London seats to Conservatives, are contesting the seats again.

A senior Lib Dem source said the party had been preparing for a snap general election since before the referendum, with 400 candidates selected and many in place for more than a year, particularly in the south-west.

As the prime minister stood on the steps of Downing Street, Farron was campaigning in Cornwall, a key battleground for the party, having visited the area four times over the last couple of months.

The strategy might seem counter-intuitive given the high proportion of leave voters in the south-west, but the most recent local byelection results were encouraging, say party sources. The Lib Dems have gained a net 33 council seats since the May 2016 local elections, many of them in the south-west, where Ukip has lost seven seats, Labour has lost 13 and the Tories 21.

However, Farron’s personal polling is an issue, with more than one-third of Britons saying they do not know who he is. The Lib Dem leader has been cagey about returning to coalition with the Conservatives but bullish about Labour, saying he could not work with Jeremy Corbyn.

According to Fabian Society analysis last year, Labour has lost as many votes to the Liberal Democrats as it has to Conservatives and Ukip combined. However, the projections also suggest the Lib Dems are highly unlikely to regain their former numbers. Even if the party were to match Labour’s support and win 20% of the vote, that would only deliver 26 seats for the Lib Dems compared with Labour’s 143.

Lib Dem sources also said they would be targeting seats where Brexit-supporting MPs were out of step with remain voters, including Vauxhall’s Labour MP, Kate Hoey. The local party has already had leaflets printed portraying Hoey sailing on a Brexit flotilla on the Thames with the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage.

Another area being targeted is St Albans, where the Tory MP Anne Main campaigned for leave but more than 62% of her constituents backed remain.